I am surprised at how so many people in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere have come to support policies underpinned by hysteria over global warming, particularly cap-and-trade legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and subsidies for "green" energy sources.

I am convinced that this is a misguided strategy - not only because of the uncertainty about the dangers that global warming might pose, but also because of the certainty of the damage that these proposed policies aimed at mitigation will impose.

I was invited to address this issue at a recent conference in Santa Barbara, Calif. My audience included business leaders who hope to profit from cap-and-trade policies and from subsidies for renewable energy and "green" jobs. My advice to them was to not get caught up in the hysteria.

Europe is several years ahead of the United States in implementing policies intended to mitigate global warming. All of the European Union's member countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol and adopted a wide range of policies to lower their emissions and meet their Kyoto targets.

These policies include a cap-and-trade initiative known as the Emissions Trading Scheme, steep fuel taxes, and ambitious programs to build windmills and other renewable-energy projects. These policies were undertaken at a time when the EU economy was doing well and - one hopes - with full knowledge that they would have significant costs.

With the global financial crisis and the sudden economic downturn, two things are becoming clear. First, it will be difficult to afford these expensive new sources of energy. Second, energy rationing policies like cap-and-trade will be a permanent drag on economic activity. Ironically, emissions have not decreased as a result of these policies, but are doing so now as the world economy moves into recession.

This is not a surprise to someone like me, having been actively involved in my country's transition from communism to a free society and market economy. The old, outmoded heavy industries that were the pride of our Communist regime were shut down - practically overnight - because they could not survive the opening of the economy. The result was a dramatic decline in carbon-dioxide emissions.

The secret behind the cut in emissions was economic decline. As the economies of the Czech Republic and other central and eastern-European countries were rebuilt and began to grow again, emissions have naturally started to increase. It should be clear to everyone that there is a very strong correlation between economic growth and energy use.

So I am amazed to see people going along with the currently fashionable political argument that policies like cap-and-trade, government mandates, and subsidies for renewable energy can actually benefit an economy. It is claimed that government, working together with business, will create "a new energy economy," that the businesses involved will profit, and that everyone will be better off.

This is a fantasy. Cap-and-trade can only work by raising energy prices. Consumers who are forced to pay higher prices for energy will have less money to spend on other things. While the individual companies that provide the higher-priced "green" energy might do well, the net economic effect will be negative.

It is necessary to look at the bigger picture. Profits can be made when energy is rationed or subsidized, but only within an economy operating at lower, or even negative, growth rates. This means that over the longer term, everyone will be competing for a piece of a pie that is smaller than it would have been without energy rationing.

This does not augur well either for growth or for working our way out of today's crisis.

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The Western Civilization is by far the most outstanding, brilliant, inventive, creative, freest, diverse civilization which has brought technological progress and betterment for mankind in terms of standard of living, health, freedom, freedom of speech, individual liberty, equality, human rights, just law and a myriad of other achievements through providing the qualities necessary for man's intellect and genius to prosper than no other civilization in the history of mankind.Our civilization, culture and way of life is in danger from exterior forces with a retrovision of the dark ages and barbarism motivated by a religious ideology of supremacism and conquest.Our goal is to defend our Civilization, Freedom Of Expression and to raise awareness about the very issues which threatens our freedoms, way of life and society.You are welcome to contact us and to send us articles, tips, interesting news, concerns etc. to:westerncivilizationandculture [a] gmail.com

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“Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.”- - Sir Winston Churchill on Adolf Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf, in The Second World War, Vol. I (The Gathering Storm).

“In a very few years, perhaps in a very few months, we shall be confronted with demands with which we shall no doubt be invited to comply. Those demands may affect the surrender of territory or the surrender of liberty. I foresee and foretell that the policy of submission will carry with it restrictions upon the freedom of speech and debate in Parliament, on public platforms, and discussions in the press, for it will be said--indeed, I hear it said sometimes now - that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticized by ordinary, common English politicians. Then, with a press under control, in part direct but more potently indirect, with every organ of public opinion doped and chloroformed into acquiescence, we shall be conducted along further stages of our journey.”-- Sir Winston Churchill

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“Those who recommend integration must be considered pea-brained even if they are scholars and scientists. Just try mixing oil and vinegar. Then shake the bottle. After a moment the two substances will separate again. Do you really believe French society could absorb ten million Muslims, who would be twenty million tomorrow and forty million the day after? In fact, my own village would no longer be Colombey-les-deux-Églises but would rather come to be known as Colombey-les-deux-mosques.” President Charles de Gaulle 1959